This work1, from Yale University Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, was essentially created by hand painting over a photograph by Andrew J. Russell taken in the middle of the American Civil War. The U.S. Library of Congress has a copy of the photograph2 (below) without the artistic embellishments.
Description on back of image:
United States Military Railway Department.
Construction and Transportation
No. 21. Expedients for Crossing Streams. – No. 21 represents a pair of small pontoons, designed to facilitate scouting operations. They should be about 10 inches diameter, and 7 or 8 feet long. They can be carried by a strap around the waist, and concealed by an overcoat. A boat can be made of these by running poles through the loops, and then placing sticks across. They were originally designed for the use of surveying parties, but for scouting expeditions they may be of much value.
The Bitter Years, Wall 2 (Drought and Erosion)
Dry and parched earth in the Bad Lands of South Dakota.
May 1936
Arthur Rothstein 4380D
The Bitter Years, in 1962, was Edward Steichen’s last exhibition as Director of the Department of Photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The images in the exhibition were personally selected by Steichen from 270,000 photos taken for the Farm Security Administration by a team of photographers employed between 1935 and 1941 to document (primarily) rural America during the Great Depression.
Image Information:
Rothstein, Arthur, photographer. Dry and parched earth in the badlands of South Dakota. May, 1936. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998019157/PP/. (Accessed September 19, 2016.)
Call Number: LC-USF34- 004380-D [P&P]
Part of: Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information Photograph Collection
Along with their meager belongings, during the Depression years, displaced farmers and other agricultural workers brought with them their cultural heritage, including the ballads and other folksongs they performed and enjoyed.1 Singing and making music took place both in private living areas and public spaces. While the music performed by the migrants came from many sources, the majority of pieces belonged to the Anglo-Celtic ballad tradition, songs such as “Barbara Allen.”2
A traditional Scottish Ballad, “Barbara Allen” has been said to be “far and away the most widely collected song in the English language — equally popular in England, Scotland and Ireland, and with hundreds of versions collected over the years in North America.”3
The ballad generally follows a standard plot, although narrative details vary between versions. Barbara Allen visits the bedside of a heartbroken young man, who pleads for her love. She refuses, claiming that he had slighted her at a prior affair; he dies soon thereafter. Barbara Allen later hears his funeral bells tolling; stricken with grief, she dies as well.4
The earliest exiting reference to the song is a January 2nd, 1666 diary entry by Samuel Pepsys. Recalling the fun and games of a New Years party, he also writes “…but above all, my dear Mrs Knipp whom I sang; and in perfect pleasure I was to hear her sing, and especially her little Scotch song of Barbary Allen.”5
Lyrics
Twas in the merry month of May
When green buds all were swelling,
Sweet William on his death bed lay
For love of Barbara Allen.
He sent his servant to the town
To the place where she was dwelling,
Saying you must come, to my master dear
If your name be Barbara Allen.
So slowly, slowly she got up
And slowly she drew nigh him,
And the only words to him did say
Young man I think you’re dying.
He turned his face unto the wall
And death was in him welling,
Good-bye, good-bye, to my friends all
Be good to Barbara Allen.
When he was dead and laid in grave
She heard the death bells knelling
And every stroke to her did say
Hard hearted Barbara Allen.
Oh mother, oh mother go dig my grave
Make it both long and narrow,
Sweet William died of love for me
And I will die of sorrow.
And father, oh father, go dig my grave
Make it both long and narrow,
Sweet William died on yesterday
And I will die tomorrow.
Barbara Allen was buried in the old churchyard
Sweet William was buried beside her,
Out of sweet William’s heart, there grew a rose
Out of Barbara Allen’s a briar.
They grew and grew in the old churchyard
Till they could grow no higher
At the end they formed, a true lover’s knot
And the rose grew round the briar.
Roud, Steve & Julia Bishop (2012). The New Penguin Book of Folk Songs. Penguin. pp. 406–7. ISBN 978-0-141-19461-5. (Cited in Wikipedia – accessed September 21, 2016)
The Bitter Years, Wall 2 (Drought and Erosion)
An abandoned farm. Cimarron County, Oklahoma
April 1936
Arthur Rothstein 4091-E
Very coincidentally, this abandoned farm is from the same time and place as the third image on yesterday’s post, Dust, Drought and Depression #8, which was originally published June 10, 2013. (I am refurbishing the old Dust, Drought, and Depression posts and republishing for 2016.)
The Bitter Years, in 1962, was Edward Steichen’s last exhibition as Director of the Department of Photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The images in the exhibition were personally selected by Steichen from 270,000 photos taken for the Farm Security Administration by a team of photographers employed between 1935 and 1941 to document (primarily) rural America during the Great Depression.
Image information:
Rothstein, Arthur, photographer. An abandoned farm. Cimarron County, Oklahoma. Apr, 1936. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998019007/PP/. (Accessed September 19, 2016.)
Call Number: LC-USF346- 004091-E [P&P]
Part of: Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information Photograph Collection
Stripped bare by the drought and grasshoppers. Trees on the farm of Mrs. Emma Knoll. Grant County, North Dakota. July 1936; photo by Arthur Rothstein; Library of Congress image.
Young family, penniless, hitchhiking on U.S. Highway 99, California. The father, twenty-four, and the mother, seventeen, came from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, early in 1935. Their baby was born in the Imperial Valley, California, where they were working as field laborers. November 1936; photo by Dorothea Lange; Library of Congress image.
Windmill and tank on an abandoned farm. Cimarron County, Oklahoma. April 1936; photo by Arthur Rothstein; Library of Congress image.
I came across this print today while looking through railroad related images on the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog, There is little information available about this American Express advertising print. The copyright owner, Mr. M. F. Berry, was the American Express general agent in New York City, “his duties being the general management and oversight of all matters in connection with the company’s local business.”1
I’ve always thought of American Express in terms of their credit card – we’ve never had one from them –, but never thought about the express part of their name.
In 1852, American Express2 started as an express mail business in Buffalo, New York with the merger of express companies owned by Henry Wells, William G. Fargo, and John Warren Butterfield. When Butterfield and other directors objected to the proposal that American Express extend operations to California, Fargo and Wells started Wells Fargo & Co. in 1852.
Carol M, Highsmith, photographer.
Retrieved from the Library of Congress; public domain
Medium: 1 photograph : digital, tiff file, color. www.loc.gov/item/2010630628/. (Accessed September 13, 2016.)
Notes:
Title, date, and subjects provided by the photographer.
Credit line: Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Gift and purchase; Carol M. Highsmith; 2009; (DLC/PP-2010:031).
Forms part of: Carol M. Highsmith’s America Project in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive.
Highsmith, a distinguished and richly published American photographer, has donated her work to the Library of Congress since 1992. Starting in 2002, Highsmith provided scans or photographs she shot digitally with new donations to allow rapid online access throughout the world. Her generosity in dedicating the rights to the American people for copyright free access also makes this Archive a very special visual resource.
Kaleidoscope image digitally rendered from an image of
Fun House sign, Seattle, Washington
The image used to render the above kaleidoscope images was used
in yesterday’s post, Fun House..
“The production of the kaleidoscope excited a singular sensation; and it is calculated that not less than two hundred thousand were sold in three months, in London and Paris together.”1, 2
“Sir David Brewster (11 December 1781 – 10 February 1868) was a Scottish physicist, mathematician, astronomer, inventor, writer, historian of science and university principal.” “He is well-recognized for being the inventor of the kaleidoscope and an improved version of the stereoscope applied to photography.” “Among the non-scientific public, his fame spread more effectually by his invention in about 1815 of the kaleidoscope, for which there was a great demand in both the United Kingdom, France, and the United States… Although Brewster patented the kaleidoscope in 1817, a copy of the prototype was shown to London opticians and copied before the patent was granted. As a consequence, the kaleidoscope became produced in large numbers, but yielded no direct financial benefits to Brewster. It proved to be a massive success with two hundred thousand kaleidoscopes sold in London and Paris in just three months.”3
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Volumes 25-26; Containing original essays; historical narratives, biographical memoirs, sketches of society, topographical descriptions, novels and tales, anecdotes, select extracts from new and expensive works, the spirit of the public journals, discoveries in the arts and sciences, useful domestic hints, etc. etc. etc.; page 154, The Kaleidoscope, published 1835 (retrieved 9/11/2016)
The initial random topic from my randomly sorted list was singular sensation. A search on the phrase “a singular sensation” yielded, among other things, the 1835 article from The Mirror.
Fun House sign, Seattle, Washington.
Located right inside the shadow cast by the Space Needle, the Funhouse is Seattle’s oldest surviving punk rock club.
September 22, 2009.
Retrieved from the Library of Congress
Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Exit78 photo series: Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign (#6)
